Several of the featured artists’ practices are founded on their intimate and often physical relationships with nature. In his photographic suite, Leaning into the wind, Dumfriesshire, Scotland, 15 January 2015 (2015) as well as a related film of the same title documenting his work and process, Andy Goldsworthy taps into nature’s resistant energy. In Burial Pyramid (1974/2010), Ana Mendieta lies buried beneath a mound of rocks – a powerful metaphor for the weight of time and history – that fall away as she breathes and becomes reborn. Los Angeles-based artist Sarah Cain also captures the atmosphere and emotion derived from the landscape within explorations of new territories for abstraction in her multimedia painting Waves (2016). Ursula von Rydingsvard, primarily known for her large-scale sculptures in bronze and cedar evoking natural land formations, translates a similar tactility into a work on paper. Further, a painting by celebrated author, poet, and artist Etel Adnan, who has frequently depicted and written about Mount Tamalpais in California, will also be on view.

Other highlights include works by McArthur Binion, Alfredo Jaar, and Samuel Levi Jones, whose works reflect poignantly upon the power of identity’s role in politics. Binion, who is included in this year’s Venice Biennale, inscribes his own identity in the form of personal documents in the “under conscious” of his paintings. Jaar’s Life Magazine, April 19, 1968 (1995) highlights ongoing racial tensions in the U.S. in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement by highlighting the lack of non-black mourners in a historical photograph of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s funeral procession. Jones, known for deconstructing books to challenge recorded narratives and historical power structures, will present a new painting at the fair.

Exploring notions of body, self, and subjectivity are Petah Coyne, Jaume Plensa, and Zilia Sánchez. Coyne’s Untitled #1396 (Catherine the Great) (2015) is one in a series of hand-blown glass flowers that personify powerful female figures under public scrutiny. Sánchez, featured in this year’s Venice Biennale, also explores the boundaries between feminine and masculine in her signature style of stretching canvas over hand-molded wooden armatures. Central to the booth is Chloe in Barcelona (2014), a larger-than-life visualization of nascent femininity and inner reflection by Jaume Plensa, whose 44-foot-tall sculpture, Echo, sits in Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park.